last neatly stacked and the poor weak woman
fell upon the newspapers. The Red Gap Recorder was shorn of its wrapper.
Being first a woman she turned to the fourth page to flash a practised
eye over that department which is headed "Life's Stages--At the
Altar--In the Cradle!--To the Tomb." Having gleaned recent vital
statistics she turned next to the column carrying the market quotations
on beef cattle, for after being a woman she is a rancher. Prices for
that day must have pleased her immensely for she grudgingly mumbled that
they were less ruinous than she had expected. In the elation of which
this admission was a sign she next refreshed me with various personal
items from a column headed "Social Gleanings--by Madame On Dit."

I learned that at the last regular meeting of the Ladies' Friday
Afternoon Shakespeare Club, Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale had read a
paper entitled "My Trip to the Panama-Pacific Exposition," after which a
dainty collation was served by mine hostess Mrs. Judge Ballard; that
Miss Beryl Mae Macomber, the well-known young society heiress, was
visiting friends in Spokane where rumour hath it that she would take a
course of lessons in elocution; and that Mrs. Cora Hartwick Wales,
prominent society matron and leader of the ultra smart set of Price's
Addition, had on Thursday afternoon at her charming new bungalow, corner
of Bella Vista Street and Prospect Avenue, entertained a number of her
inmates at tea. Ma Pettengill and I here quickly agreed that the
proofreading on the Recorder was not all it should be. Then she
unctuously read me a longer item from another column which was signed
"The Lounger in the Lobby":

"Mr. Benjamin P. Sutton, the wealthy capitalist of Nome, Alaska, and a
prince of good fellows, is again in our midst for his annual visit to
His Honour Alonzo Price, Red Gap's present mayor, of whom he is an
old-time friend and associate. Mr. Sutton, who is the picture of health,
brings glowing reports from the North and is firm in his belief that
Alaska will at no distant day become the garden spot of the world. In
the course of a brief interview he confided to ye scribe that on his
present trip to the outside he would not again revisit his birthplace,
the city of New York, as he did last year. 'Once was enough, for many
reasons,' said Mr. Sutton grimly. 'They call it "Little old New York,"
but it isn't little and it isn't old. It's big and it's new--we have
older buildings right in Nom